


Each Other to Forgive

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Incest, M/M, Porn Battle, Post Reichenbach, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only reason Sherlock is here is that no one who knew him would come looking for him in Mycroft’s house. [Written for Porn Battle; spoilers for The Reichenbach Fall]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Other to Forgive

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle 13 for prompts: _forgive, night_. No actual porn. Spoilers for The Reichenbach Fall.

Mycroft finds them in the library. Sherlock is stretched the length of the sofa, and John is sitting on the floor with his back against the coffee table. Mycroft walks past Sherlock and stops before he reaches John. He pushes Sherlock’s feet from the edge of the sofa, and sits down in the space that has been left. Sherlock glares at him, betrayed.

Sherlock appeared at his door nine days ago, bleeding from a wound that took Mycroft an unforgivably long time to locate, preoccupied with the notion that someone had unburied his brother’s corpse and left it on his doorstep to torment him. Sherlock had opened wide eyes and glared at him; Mycroft had dragged him through the door and telephoned John. He suspects John had believed Mycroft was having a nervous collapse, from his tone during the first minutes of the telephone conversation. But he had still arrived at Mycroft’s door, prepared for surgery or for anything else that might transpire. Old habits.

John picks Mycroft’s book up from the table and passes it over. He is concentrating his own attention on a Raymond Chandler novel. Mycroft would have assumed that John either dealt with enough pulp fiction in his day-to-day life, or would have already read The Long Goodbye, but he seems engrossed enough all the same. Mycroft opens his book – a study of counterfeiting during the First World War – but looks back at Sherlock.

He had been angry when he woke up. Sherlock throws tantrums like no one else Mycroft has ever known and this one was working up to be truly spectacular before he pulled a stitch and John had to deal with that hurriedly. By the time he was patched up again, John had calmed him down. John has, on the whole, been reacting to Sherlock’s resurrection better than either Mycroft or Sherlock. He hadn’t had the time to react poorly: Sherlock had been bleeding. He had shouted afterwards, but Mycroft suspects that by that point his heart wasn’t in it.

“I should go tomorrow,” Sherlock says.

“You’re not well,” John answers, not looking up.

“I’m fine. You are in danger, with me here.” He looks at Mycroft again. “This is why you should never have called him.”

John says, “You didn’t think that this put Mycroft in danger?”

“Why would anyone look for me here? But they might have followed you. Noticed you didn’t return home.”

“This is your _brother’s place_ , Sherlock. It’s not one of the first places a person would look?”

“Not for me,” Sherlock says.

Mycroft has no room to protest. The only reason Sherlock is here is that no one who knew him would come looking for him in Mycroft’s house. He has tried to explain the kind of relationship they had to John, but even knowing all he knew about them, John hadn’t believed it. John had been unmovable – ‘You told me you worried. You tried to protect him from Adler and the whole British government so don’t tell me you didn’t…’ – and it was easier in the end not to argue.

John turns around so he is lying on his back on the rug. “He’s your brother, Sherlock.”

“And?”

“He’s your brother, and he loves you, of course you might come here.”

Mycroft stops turning pages. Sherlock sighs in a particularly disbelieving way. “The sentiment people pile onto a simple matter of blood and a childhood spent in the same place is astounding. If we met as adults he would have no more interest in me than as an occasional slight thorn in the side of the police service’s ineptitude.”

John sits up. “Hang on. That’s not right though, is it? There’s a- don’t siblings who meet as adults sometimes end up falling for each other? Because we’re more likely to trust people who look like us?”

Sherlock casts one unforgiving glance between Mycroft and John, and returns to staring at the ceiling. 

John looks between Mycroft and Sherlock. “Yes, exactly like that.”

Sherlock startles, sending his feet colliding into Mycroft’s thigh. “Like what?”

John rolls his eyes. “Now he’s interested. Like the kind of people who would either fake their own death or tear the justice system apart in response to the supposed death, then turn up on their brother’s door, call me in a screaming panic, and still refuse to admit that they might have missed each other. You have a lot in common, just so we’re clear.”

Mycroft says, “Largely the parts that society doesn’t approve of.” Neither of them are naturally empathetic, they see the world in puzzles and bigger pictures, and are surprised sometimes by their own pettiness. Mycroft resents, rather, the implication that he loves Sherlock because he is supposed to. He loves Sherlock because his brother is extraordinary and exasperating and the world would be less without him in it. But he also loves him because he is _Mycroft’s_ even if Sherlock would not accept such an assertion.

Sherlock says, “So it is true then?” His voice is as accusing as if he were asking ‘so you cut him into pieces and buried them up and down the country?’

“What is?” Mycroft asks patiently. “That we are alike, or that I love you? Both, I’m sorry to say. The second probably more than the first.” He leans over to put his hand on Sherlock’s chest. “Stay where you are, you’ll pull another stitch.” Sherlock manages to get upright all the same. Another betrayal, he will be thinking. Mycroft is supposed to be like him, in this way if in no other that Sherlock recognises. In most cases, he is. But Sherlock is an exception. They are allowed to make exceptions for each other. Mycroft adds, trying to provide clarity, “And you love John.”

Sherlock waves one hand dismissively. “Of course I- that’s not the point.”

John protests, “It’s a bit of the point.”

“Not now, John. Mycroft.”

John sighs. “I’m pretty sure you love him too. Or at least you’re never so disappointed in anyone else when they aren’t clever enough for your standards.”

Sherlock examines Mycroft’s face for a very long moment. It is perhaps more difficult to consider someone beautiful when you have seen them shaking from the after-effects of drug withdrawal, elbow-deep in entrails, very effectively pretending to be dead, and lastly petulantly insisting that they should be allowed to leave your care even though it will likely kill them properly this time. Sherlock is, however, lovely by almost anyone’s definition of the term. Even for Mycroft, who does not use such words lightly.

Sherlock tugs at the cuff of Mycroft’s shirt and, when he has sufficiently persuaded him to cross the space between them on the couch, kisses him with a terrible speed. A poet would describe it as a storm cloud bursting; Mycroft notes rather more technically that Sherlock has in fact done that before.

John says weakly, “Sherlock. I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to tell you that was-.”

“Non-standard behaviour,” Sherlock fills in.

“Yeah, all right.” 

“ _Boring_ ,” Sherlock answers with deep relish. “Come here.”

When John doesn’t move quickly enough across the floor, Sherlock half-crawls off the chair in attempt to hurry him. Mycroft has to make a hasty grab to keep him from tumbling off and in the ensuing tussle, kisses Sherlock back. He is not quick about it. Sherlock had been dead, and now is not, and that seems to matter rather more than the fact that they are still furious with each other.

John gets onto the sofa on the other side of Sherlock, and Sherlock turns to face him. “Stay there,” he says quietly. Sherlock touches the side of his face, exploring the new lines at his forehead and around his eyes. He doesn’t apologise for causing them, but he does kiss John, very delicately, and keeps a careful hold on his arm. Sherlock’s voice is slow with wonder: “You saw each other when I was gone.”

“Yes, of course we-.” John begins. “Yes, Sherlock. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should…”

“No,” Sherlock agrees, “but it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t.” That may be as close to a credo as Sherlock has. His eyes are bright with the glow of a new idea. It won’t last, it doesn’t ever last; for the moment he is lit from within. 

“You still think that you should leave tomorrow?” Mycroft asks.

“Yes.” Sherlock shifts on the sofa, knowingly or unknowingly allowing John to tangle their limbs, letting his head fall back against Mycroft’s chest. Permitting them both their human indiscretions, perhaps, to store up against his departure. “It’s more important now that I know. I can’t come back here.”

“You can when it’s done,” John says. “Finish it, and then come back to Baker Street, and Mycroft can go back to occasionally kidnapping us and everything will be-.”

“It won’t be the same,” Sherlock says.

“Nothing ever is,” Mycroft adds.

John looks at Mycroft across Sherlock, and then at Sherlock himself. He sighs. “Let’s not waste tonight arguing then.”

Sometimes, quite by accident, John happens upon the crux of the matter before either of them. Mycroft pulls Sherlock securely against his chest, counting out his rapid heartbeat as it pulses through his skin. John unbuttons Sherlock’s shirt, careful of the bandages covering his neat handiwork, and leans just enough of his weight forward. Between the two of them, Sherlock smiles.


End file.
